


Exoskeleton

by Moorishflower



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The envirosuit comes between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exoskeleton

Being in a relationship with an insecure, unstable, unstoppable biotic superwoman has its downsides. The insecurity plays a big part in it - Tali has to repeatedly explain to Jack that they cannot kiss, they cannot shed their clothes and lay with each other, they cannot do...any of the things that Jack so gleefully whispers against Tali's shoulder when they are lying in bed together, down in the darkness of the engineering sector. They cannot do any of these things, because the moment Tali removes her suit she will get sick. She tries to explain all the different _ways_ she can get sick, to illustrate her point, but Jack covers her ears and hangs her head between her knees and begins to growl, and so Tali judges it best to leave that subject alone.

It's not because Jack is unintelligent. When Tali is working on the engines, trying to push them to their fullest capacity, Jack sometimes helps her. She has no in-depth knowledge of machinery, not the way Tali does, but she's a fast learner, and her biotics come in handy, sometimes, when Tali needs something heavy fetched from far away. No, Jack is not unintelligent. But she doesn't like to listen to things that make her unhappy, and her automatic assumption is always that Tali does not want to remove her suit because she does not want Jack the way Jack wants her.

Which is stupid. Tali has never wanted _anyone_ the way she wants Jack. She just...can't. And Jack has trouble understanding the difference between "doesn't want to" and "can't."

"What do you look like underneath that mask," Jack breathes, breathes against her envirosuit instead of her skin, and that hurts Tali, as well, Jack has no _idea_ how much it hurts. She rolls over in Jack's arms, careful not to let anything catch on the rough sheets that Jack prefers.

"It has been so long since I looked at myself," she says, and Jack frowns, a sympathetic frown. "I must always be so careful not to become sick, and I must take so many medications when I remove the suit. It is easier just to remove parts at a time, to bathe or to tend wounds. I have not removed my helmet since..." She falls silent, and Jack nudges forward, trying to distract her from dark thoughts of the Migrant Fleet. Of her father. Tali shakes her head, and strokes her fingers down Jack's side until their hands meet. Five fingers. Human hands are so interesting.

"We are not so dissimilar," she says, finally, and then takes Jack's hand and lifts it, places it gently on the swell of her breast. What Jack would call a breast, anyways. This makes Jack smile, and derails the conversation, and thus they are both happy, for a while. Jack peppers kisses across the front of Tali's helmet, touches her on the outside of her suit, and they forget that the suit is between them at all. For a time, they are simply Jack and Tali, not subject zero and the Quarian traitor.

Three days later, after catching Jack surfing the extranet on one of the Normandy's public terminals not once, but four times, she walks into engineering proper, intent on working on the drive core for a little while, only to find that there is a present sitting at the terminal she normally works at. None of the engineers know where it came from or who left it, only that it is for her, and she carries it to Jack's corner of the deck, away from the curious eyes of Daniels and Donnelly. Jack's bed is neatly made, but the woman herself is nowhere to be found, and Tali sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, holding the present in her lap.

 _To Tali_ , it says on the top, written in a sprawling, almost childish scrawl. Tali carefully peels back the wrapping, years of a scavenger's lifestyle telling her to not tear it, lest she need it later, to reveal a folded piece of bright cloth. She shakes it out, the metallic silver color of it catching the dim light and refracting it into a spatter of rainbows. It is long, and shaped oddly, meant to drape rather than to simply cover, and it takes Tali a moment to recognize it.

It is a headscarf. Like the one she wears to cover her helmet, but longer, and obviously more luxurious. She thinks the fabric must be soft, as well, for the way it slips through her fingers like water.

She glances down at her lap, where a small, folded note has fallen from where it was tucked into the headscarf. She carefully folds and then sets the fabric aside, and then picks up the note, smoothing it out.

 _I know you like to dance,_ it says, in that same, messy scrawl. _I'd love to see you dance in this. - J_

And Tali has never hated her envirosuit more, because it means she can only hug the headscarf to her chest, and not to her skin, and it prevents her from reaching up and wiping the tears from her eyes. Yet - and this is the strange part - she cannot think of a time in her life when she was happier.  



End file.
